“Wisdom
literature and poetry ground us in the truth that our struggles are struggles
that humanity has wrestled with throughout history. Thousands
of years ago, the Israelites wrestled with fear, doubt, insecurities,
suffering, and sin—much like us, today.”

“The older I get, making sure all my “beliefs” of God are lined up as they
should be loses more and more of its luster. I see the Bible focusing a lot
more on something far more demanding: trust. Try it. Which is harder to say? I
believe in God or I trust God?”

“The good news is, there are plenty of
companies out there who are committed to fair trade practices in chocolate
production. The bad news is, there aren’t a lot of them that offer fair trade
chocolate chips. After quite a bit of research, I narrowed down the field to
two primary brands of fair trade chocolate chips: Camino and SunSpire.”

“Today
there are more African-Americans under correctional control — in prison or
jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the
Civil War began. There are millions of African-Americans now cycling in and out
of prisons and jails or under correctional control. In major American cities
today, more than half of working-age African-American men are either under
correctional control or branded felons and are thus subject to legalized
discrimination for the rest of their lives."

“To be shamed, then, for being normal, average, good enough or
a failure is to be shamed by a fear-based illusion. Basically, you are being
shamed for being what you are--a human being. That's that tragedy of modern
life: You are not allowed to be a human being. You have to be better, something
more. A god. Otherwise you're a failure.”

“The path of grief is not a straight line. You don’t
start off in the deepest slough then climb up each step to get back to
peaceful. Grief moves forward, but in a looping line. You’re going
along, making progress then you hit a loop and your stomach lurches and
everything is flipped upside down and you land right back where you were a few
weeks or months ago. Eventually, the loops get smaller and spread farther
apart, but they’re still there to…well, to throw you for a loop.”

“I also
know that plenty of folks have turned their backs permanently on the church, on
religion, on Jesus, because they have struggled with heavy yokes and been
locked out of the kingdom of God. I’ve had the privilege of helping a few hear
the good news in the Good News, and seen them stand up
straighter when the yoke is lifted off their shoulders. The church is still a
place where prisoners are released and slaves are set free.”

“And this is the sad thing. That we'd
rather live with cognitive dissonance, believing that women are somehow equal
but yet somehow lesser-- or that they are to be restricted for no reason, but
that God is still just-- than to believe it's possible we're misreading our
Bibles. We'd rather restrict women and have the Bible be
"clear" than admit that we just might be wrong. Certainty is
more important than female humanity.”

“If you really want to be in healthy
relationships, stop “guarding” your heart and start using it. Walk through the
mistakes you will inevitably make and learn from them. Find a community of
people who are practicing vulnerability. Fill your heart full of the love that
makes it come alive, full of grace, full of determination to walk with pain
rather than around it, and you will be much better off than any heart that has
been merely “guarded.” If you want to learn vulnerability, allow God to really
truly love you, exactly where you are, with a love that disintegrates shame. My
capacity to love has grown exponentially since I stopped guarding my heart.”

[See also Aprille at Kindred Grace with “Hearts Are Not
Construction Paper” for another excellent perspective on this notion of "guarding your heart" by shutting down emotions.]

“Strachan explains that this
is the undermining of Protestant values, because boys shouldn't be taught to
play with dolls, and that after this confusing message from Gordon, Baby Bear
needs the Gospel. While I sympathize with
Strachan's concern that boys might grow up to be nurturing fathers, both he and
Sesame Street are missing the point. The
fact is, Baby Bear should not be playing with baby dolls. He is a bear. And
socializing him with humans (let alone human babies) can only bring grief. I know,
you might think I'm overreacting, but the Bible is very clear on the role of
bears in human relationships. They are meant to bevoracious
killing machines. I mean, the ONE COMMAND God gives
specifically to bears is to "Arise and
devour much flesh." This attempt to anthropomorphize and
humanize bears strikes at the heart of everything the gospel teaches about
bears.”

“e.e. cummings wrote a book of poems that was turned down by
14 publishers. He finally published it under the title "No Thanks."
The dedication was a list of all the publishers who had rejected it, arranged
in the shape of a funeral urn.”

“The thing about being a little black girl in
the world who is already, at nine years old, confident enough to demand that lazy,
disrespectful reporters call you by your name, is that most people will not
understand the amount of comfort in one's own skin it takes to do that, will
not be able to grasp the sheer fierceness of it, the boldness, the certainty,
the love for yourself, and will not be blown away at seeing you do it, though
they should be.”

“So when you read my bios, when you pop
over from twitter and read a post I write and somehow find my one hundred or
four hundred word about-me that talks about my redeemed marriage, please know
that it’s not perfect. It’s far from that. In fact, it’s a struggle
each day to love well and like wading through mud to suppress our own selfish
inclinations. Each step toward Jesus and toward grace is harder than
the last and we fall in to bed at the end of each day with a sigh, that
yes-we-made-it-through-another-day-barely-intact.”

A Few Highlights From #FemFest 2013…

“ I am an accidental
feminist, for my liberation did not come from Simone de Beauvoir or Betty
Friedan, but from Mary and Martha, Junia and Priscilla, Phoebe and Tabitha. It
came from the marvelous and radical recognition that if the gospel is good news
for them, then maybe it is good news for me too... “

To me,
feminism was a soothing balm to a heart that had been battered and rejected by
Christian culture for simply not looking like what they thought it
should. Where
the prevailing culture said you are wrong, you are dangerous, you are
unsubmissive, you are undesirable, you are not enough, you are too
much, feminism said you are a person. At bottom, feminism is, as the
old saying goes, the radical notion that women are people.”

“And then
there were the prophets and the preachers: high-heeled at the pulpit, with
manicured hands to lay. They were beautiful, smart, strong, and spoke
with authority. Because the Spirit moves where the Spirit moves. I was
taught a fiercely loyal Ruth and a wise Deborah; through the bravery of Esther
a nation saved, through the bravery of Mary, a world saved, a multitude reborn.
Because the Spirit moves where the Spirit moves.”

“Because the truth is that feminism is having conversations that the church is
not. The church is not yet a safe place for victims of abuse. The church is
still blaming women for causing men to stumble, thinking that “What were you
wearing?” is a perfectly okay question to ask a victim of rape, and refusing to
believe women when they come forward about being sexually assaulted by
Christian men. The church is not yet asking questions about privilege, and
seems to think oppression is something that happens outside its walls. The
church needs the framework that feminism is providing.”

“I'm a
feminist because I want my son to see all people as valuable human beings,
created in God's image. I want him to reject culturally constructed ideas about
what it means to be "masculine" or "feminine" and to
embrace biblical truth about what it means to be human, male and female,
created in the image of a loving God. So I'll teach him to love, respect,
nurture, and protect; todance, weep, subvert, and sing.
I'll teach himhow to turn
swords into plowshares, and I'll warn him thatpower and
domination are not the ultimate ends of manhood.
I'll tell him that the Bible does have a few things to say about what it
means to be a man; and that it has a lot more to say about what it means to be
loved, transformed, and made holy. I'll tell him the Kingdom is coming, and
that it's here.”

This is where my faith intersects my feminism:
worldly political and religious power crucified Christ, and when he
rose from the dead,Jesus made a spectacle of their oppressive power,
greed, fear, and blood thirst.The
equality we seekis found
not on the altar of empire but the upside-down Kingdom of Christ.”

“Undoubtedly this world needs to know the
Father’s Heart. But in a culture where His people are often seen as
harsh and cold, judgmental and stoic, and in a generation where that mirrors
the way many fathers treated their children, is it any wonder that we have such
misconceptions about what His heart may look like? I think it is
time that we know the Father’s Mama-Heart, too. And as I look
around at a new generation of women – confident in the gifts God has given
them, and bearing light and love in their homes, communities, and worlds, I’m
beginning to see new currents of compassion, grace, mercy
and gentleness come alive. It’s always been a part of His
heart, but when mama-hearted-women step into their calling, I believe it unveils
the Father in new and vibrant ways. “

“I've been told I'm smart for a
girl, funny for a girl, good at math for a girl,
handy for a girl, easy to talk to for a girl.
Until people started lining up to tell me all the things I was good at doing,
you know, for a girl, I didn't realize people thought that those
were things girls weren't good at doing in the first place.”

“Because
I grew up sharing a room with Ramona Quimby, I want to see all children
affirmed in their capacity to understand and imagine the world as creatively as
they can. Because I sat impatiently through schoolwork with Anne, I want to
build a world where no one is mocked for their differences and I crave a life
built on intimate, bosom friendships. Because I wept with Lucy and Susan over
the altar of Aslan’s death, I can now raise a loudEshet Chayil!, praising the
womanly valor of St. Mary of Magdala, Apostle to the Apostles, and all the
women who daily proclaim the Resurrection’s power into my life. And because I
loved and learned with Meg Murry to imagine a deeper and more beautiful world,
today I am proud to say that I am a feminist, participating in a conversation
that at its best, exists to unchain the imagination, to envision and build a
world set free from imprisoning ideologies, a world where all are equal, even
if not alike."

“And
I think of them, sometimes, of that second Man and that other woman, in that
garden west of Golgotha, and I think of her as she was sent forth, running
east, and I think of the tangled mess of grace tripping and dancing round her
in her wake, her feet bringing the news of healed cosmos, healed creation, and
He has done this, first, and we shall follow, and so comes the Light. So
blossoms the garden of us all.”

“For me, everything was at stake. My entire identity was
invested in this caricature of masculinity that had been cultivated in me my
entire life, and refined to perfection in the crucible of Army
culture. Certainly, there were a number of factors that contributed
to the disintegration of that identity, but feminism played a crucial role
in giving me the words to articulate much of what I knew all along was so
very wrong with this culture I was immersed in, and in turn, probably saved my
marriage, and ultimately brought me back and far deeper into my faith than I
had ever been before. It's funny, I've always seen the Holy Spirit as the
mother in the little nuclear family of Trinitarian theology, so there's a kind
of synchronicity in the fact that feminism was that thing that She used to woo
me back.”

On the Blog…

This
kind of thing is why I tell my students (all freshmen at a Christian college),
"Always be skeptical when someone starts a sentence with, 'the Bible
clearly says.'" If someone says those words, your first response should be
to question their position intensely. They might be right, or they might be
wrong, but you definitely need to investigate whatever it is they think the
Bible so clearly states.

“Wesley is a very brave guy. By telling his story, he runs the risk of
condemnation from some Christians who choose not to show Christ's love to LGBT
persons. And he runs the risk of condemnation from some LGBT persons and
supporters who choose to rebuff him because he isn't supporting their position
on homosexuality. That has to be an incredibly tough, lonely place to be in. I
respect his bravery.”

“Wisdom
literature and poetry ground us in the truth that our struggles are struggles
that humanity has wrestled with throughout history. Thousands
of years ago, the Israelites wrestled with fear, doubt, insecurities,
suffering, and sin—much like us, today.”

“The older I get, making sure all my “beliefs” of God are lined up as they
should be loses more and more of its luster. I see the Bible focusing a lot
more on something far more demanding: trust. Try it. Which is harder to say? I
believe in God or I trust God?”

“The good news is, there are plenty of
companies out there who are committed to fair trade practices in chocolate
production. The bad news is, there aren’t a lot of them that offer fair trade
chocolate chips. After quite a bit of research, I narrowed down the field to
two primary brands of fair trade chocolate chips: Camino and SunSpire.”

“Today
there are more African-Americans under correctional control — in prison or
jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the
Civil War began. There are millions of African-Americans now cycling in and out
of prisons and jails or under correctional control. In major American cities
today, more than half of working-age African-American men are either under
correctional control or branded felons and are thus subject to legalized
discrimination for the rest of their lives."

“To be shamed, then, for being normal, average, good enough or
a failure is to be shamed by a fear-based illusion. Basically, you are being
shamed for being what you are--a human being. That's that tragedy of modern
life: You are not allowed to be a human being. You have to be better, something
more. A god. Otherwise you're a failure.”

“The path of grief is not a straight line. You don’t
start off in the deepest slough then climb up each step to get back to
peaceful. Grief moves forward, but in a looping line. You’re going
along, making progress then you hit a loop and your stomach lurches and
everything is flipped upside down and you land right back where you were a few
weeks or months ago. Eventually, the loops get smaller and spread farther
apart, but they’re still there to…well, to throw you for a loop.”

“I also
know that plenty of folks have turned their backs permanently on the church, on
religion, on Jesus, because they have struggled with heavy yokes and been
locked out of the kingdom of God. I’ve had the privilege of helping a few hear
the good news in the Good News, and seen them stand up
straighter when the yoke is lifted off their shoulders. The church is still a
place where prisoners are released and slaves are set free.”

“And this is the sad thing. That we'd
rather live with cognitive dissonance, believing that women are somehow equal
but yet somehow lesser-- or that they are to be restricted for no reason, but
that God is still just-- than to believe it's possible we're misreading our
Bibles. We'd rather restrict women and have the Bible be
"clear" than admit that we just might be wrong. Certainty is
more important than female humanity.”

“If you really want to be in healthy
relationships, stop “guarding” your heart and start using it. Walk through the
mistakes you will inevitably make and learn from them. Find a community of
people who are practicing vulnerability. Fill your heart full of the love that
makes it come alive, full of grace, full of determination to walk with pain
rather than around it, and you will be much better off than any heart that has
been merely “guarded.” If you want to learn vulnerability, allow God to really
truly love you, exactly where you are, with a love that disintegrates shame. My
capacity to love has grown exponentially since I stopped guarding my heart.”

[See also Aprille at Kindred Grace with “Hearts Are Not
Construction Paper” for another excellent perspective on this notion of "guarding your heart" by shutting down emotions.]

“Strachan explains that this
is the undermining of Protestant values, because boys shouldn't be taught to
play with dolls, and that after this confusing message from Gordon, Baby Bear
needs the Gospel. While I sympathize with
Strachan's concern that boys might grow up to be nurturing fathers, both he and
Sesame Street are missing the point. The
fact is, Baby Bear should not be playing with baby dolls. He is a bear. And
socializing him with humans (let alone human babies) can only bring grief. I know,
you might think I'm overreacting, but the Bible is very clear on the role of
bears in human relationships. They are meant to bevoracious
killing machines. I mean, the ONE COMMAND God gives
specifically to bears is to "Arise and
devour much flesh." This attempt to anthropomorphize and
humanize bears strikes at the heart of everything the gospel teaches about
bears.”

“e.e. cummings wrote a book of poems that was turned down by
14 publishers. He finally published it under the title "No Thanks."
The dedication was a list of all the publishers who had rejected it, arranged
in the shape of a funeral urn.”

“The thing about being a little black girl in
the world who is already, at nine years old, confident enough to demand that lazy,
disrespectful reporters call you by your name, is that most people will not
understand the amount of comfort in one's own skin it takes to do that, will
not be able to grasp the sheer fierceness of it, the boldness, the certainty,
the love for yourself, and will not be blown away at seeing you do it, though
they should be.”

“So when you read my bios, when you pop
over from twitter and read a post I write and somehow find my one hundred or
four hundred word about-me that talks about my redeemed marriage, please know
that it’s not perfect. It’s far from that. In fact, it’s a struggle
each day to love well and like wading through mud to suppress our own selfish
inclinations. Each step toward Jesus and toward grace is harder than
the last and we fall in to bed at the end of each day with a sigh, that
yes-we-made-it-through-another-day-barely-intact.”

A Few Highlights From #FemFest 2013…

“ I am an accidental
feminist, for my liberation did not come from Simone de Beauvoir or Betty
Friedan, but from Mary and Martha, Junia and Priscilla, Phoebe and Tabitha. It
came from the marvelous and radical recognition that if the gospel is good news
for them, then maybe it is good news for me too... “

To me,
feminism was a soothing balm to a heart that had been battered and rejected by
Christian culture for simply not looking like what they thought it
should. Where
the prevailing culture said you are wrong, you are dangerous, you are
unsubmissive, you are undesirable, you are not enough, you are too
much, feminism said you are a person. At bottom, feminism is, as the
old saying goes, the radical notion that women are people.”

“And then
there were the prophets and the preachers: high-heeled at the pulpit, with
manicured hands to lay. They were beautiful, smart, strong, and spoke
with authority. Because the Spirit moves where the Spirit moves. I was
taught a fiercely loyal Ruth and a wise Deborah; through the bravery of Esther
a nation saved, through the bravery of Mary, a world saved, a multitude reborn.
Because the Spirit moves where the Spirit moves.”

“Because the truth is that feminism is having conversations that the church is
not. The church is not yet a safe place for victims of abuse. The church is
still blaming women for causing men to stumble, thinking that “What were you
wearing?” is a perfectly okay question to ask a victim of rape, and refusing to
believe women when they come forward about being sexually assaulted by
Christian men. The church is not yet asking questions about privilege, and
seems to think oppression is something that happens outside its walls. The
church needs the framework that feminism is providing.”

“I'm a
feminist because I want my son to see all people as valuable human beings,
created in God's image. I want him to reject culturally constructed ideas about
what it means to be "masculine" or "feminine" and to
embrace biblical truth about what it means to be human, male and female,
created in the image of a loving God. So I'll teach him to love, respect,
nurture, and protect; todance, weep, subvert, and sing.
I'll teach himhow to turn
swords into plowshares, and I'll warn him thatpower and
domination are not the ultimate ends of manhood.
I'll tell him that the Bible does have a few things to say about what it
means to be a man; and that it has a lot more to say about what it means to be
loved, transformed, and made holy. I'll tell him the Kingdom is coming, and
that it's here.”

This is where my faith intersects my feminism:
worldly political and religious power crucified Christ, and when he
rose from the dead,Jesus made a spectacle of their oppressive power,
greed, fear, and blood thirst.The
equality we seekis found
not on the altar of empire but the upside-down Kingdom of Christ.”

“Undoubtedly this world needs to know the
Father’s Heart. But in a culture where His people are often seen as
harsh and cold, judgmental and stoic, and in a generation where that mirrors
the way many fathers treated their children, is it any wonder that we have such
misconceptions about what His heart may look like? I think it is
time that we know the Father’s Mama-Heart, too. And as I look
around at a new generation of women – confident in the gifts God has given
them, and bearing light and love in their homes, communities, and worlds, I’m
beginning to see new currents of compassion, grace, mercy
and gentleness come alive. It’s always been a part of His
heart, but when mama-hearted-women step into their calling, I believe it unveils
the Father in new and vibrant ways. “

“I've been told I'm smart for a
girl, funny for a girl, good at math for a girl,
handy for a girl, easy to talk to for a girl.
Until people started lining up to tell me all the things I was good at doing,
you know, for a girl, I didn't realize people thought that those
were things girls weren't good at doing in the first place.”

“Because
I grew up sharing a room with Ramona Quimby, I want to see all children
affirmed in their capacity to understand and imagine the world as creatively as
they can. Because I sat impatiently through schoolwork with Anne, I want to
build a world where no one is mocked for their differences and I crave a life
built on intimate, bosom friendships. Because I wept with Lucy and Susan over
the altar of Aslan’s death, I can now raise a loudEshet Chayil!, praising the
womanly valor of St. Mary of Magdala, Apostle to the Apostles, and all the
women who daily proclaim the Resurrection’s power into my life. And because I
loved and learned with Meg Murry to imagine a deeper and more beautiful world,
today I am proud to say that I am a feminist, participating in a conversation
that at its best, exists to unchain the imagination, to envision and build a
world set free from imprisoning ideologies, a world where all are equal, even
if not alike."

“And
I think of them, sometimes, of that second Man and that other woman, in that
garden west of Golgotha, and I think of her as she was sent forth, running
east, and I think of the tangled mess of grace tripping and dancing round her
in her wake, her feet bringing the news of healed cosmos, healed creation, and
He has done this, first, and we shall follow, and so comes the Light. So
blossoms the garden of us all.”

“For me, everything was at stake. My entire identity was
invested in this caricature of masculinity that had been cultivated in me my
entire life, and refined to perfection in the crucible of Army
culture. Certainly, there were a number of factors that contributed
to the disintegration of that identity, but feminism played a crucial role
in giving me the words to articulate much of what I knew all along was so
very wrong with this culture I was immersed in, and in turn, probably saved my
marriage, and ultimately brought me back and far deeper into my faith than I
had ever been before. It's funny, I've always seen the Holy Spirit as the
mother in the little nuclear family of Trinitarian theology, so there's a kind
of synchronicity in the fact that feminism was that thing that She used to woo
me back.”

On the Blog…

This
kind of thing is why I tell my students (all freshmen at a Christian college),
"Always be skeptical when someone starts a sentence with, 'the Bible
clearly says.'" If someone says those words, your first response should be
to question their position intensely. They might be right, or they might be
wrong, but you definitely need to investigate whatever it is they think the
Bible so clearly states.

“Wesley is a very brave guy. By telling his story, he runs the risk of
condemnation from some Christians who choose not to show Christ's love to LGBT
persons. And he runs the risk of condemnation from some LGBT persons and
supporters who choose to rebuff him because he isn't supporting their position
on homosexuality. That has to be an incredibly tough, lonely place to be in. I
respect his bravery.”

This week’s posts…

"Washed and Waiting," Chapter 1: Celibacy and the Gospel Story

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